WordCamp Europe 2021 Recap – Exciting Updates That You Need to Know

WordCamp Europe 2021 has just finished. As like every time, this year also the main vision was to talk about the ongoing topics of the industry and the future of WordPress as well. It was a great opportunity for all WordPress enthusiasts around the world to know more about WordPress.

It was a three-day-long event and numbers of sessions were taken to unveil some exciting updates regarding the WordPress industry. So, if you’re a WordPress enthusiast and somehow missed this event, don’t be panicked.

As, today, we are going to talk about all the sessions, workshops, interviews, and panel discussions that happened in this WordCamp so that you don’t miss any exciting updates. Let’s get started!

WordCamp Europe 2021 in Numbers 

Though WordCamp Europe was held online and hence it was challenging to reach more people but the numbers show us it was a pretty much successful and satisfying WordCamp. Let’s have a look at this year’s numbers and stats.

• 3290 people registered
• 1841 people logged in at once
• People from 121 countries participated
• People attended from 13 different timezones
• Total 29 sessions were taken
• 18 sponsors interviews were taken
• A total of 48 speakers, presenters, and panelists participated.

It was a great event, and the statistics above just prove its success, right?

WordCamp Europe 2021 Sessions – Hear the Experts’ Voice

WordCamp has always been a learning event for all of the WordPress enthusiasts. This year it was not any different. WordPress veterans from all around the globe took some amazing sessions on different WordPress topics.

Let’s check those amazing sessions and find out our takeaways.

• How Agile WordPress Project Management Helps in Improving Productivity: This session was taken by Kartik Shukla. He is a certified ScrumMaster & passionate Project Manager with 9.5 years of experience. His talk was about the benefits of Agile WordPress project management and how it improves productivity. Click here to watch the session.

• Client Management – Transition from a Vendor to a Consultant: The session was led by the CEO of Devrix, Mario Peshev. He is a WordPress core contributor since WordPress 3.7. His talk was about the strategies that help you to manage your clients with ease. Click here to watch the session.

• Ready, Set, Change! Simplify and Accelerate Organizational Change: This session was taken by April Callis. She is an internationally known organizational change management expert that has implemented change for clients including the State of Michigan, Whirlpool, AAA, and the University of Michigan. Click here to watch the session.

• Fostering Community Intentionally: The speaker of this session was Katie Richar. She is a Community Coordinator at Pantheon who spends her time working with and advocating for the amazing folk of the Pantheon Heroes project. Her talk was about the ways to grow the community. Click here to watch the session.

• Photography for Websites: If you’re finding the best solutions for your website photography, this session of Scott would be very helpful for you. Scott is a Professor and Chair of the Art Department at Samford University in Birmingham AL teaching graphic and UX design. Click here to watch the recorded session.

• End-to-end testing using CodeceptJS: CodeceptJS is a modern end-to-end testing framework. The speaker of this session Shanjidah Afros has elaborately described the framework for beginners. She is working as a QA Engineer at weDevs. Click here to watch the session.

WCEU Panel Discussions – Exciting Updates that You Need to Know

The panel discussion is something that we all wait for, right? This year some really crucial topics were discussed by the panellists. These discussions helped us to get an idea of how WordPress is going to be shaped in the coming future.

Let’s find out the agendas and panellists of this year’s panel discussion –

Full Site Editing

Full Site Editing has been considered the future of WordPress. If you have the experience to use Gutenberg block editor or page builders like Elementor, Divi, and Beaver, then you’ll easily understand how FSE will work. It will let you create the full site using drag and drop blocks just like other page builders.

The panelists, highly involved in this new feature, discussed many topics about FSE and how it is going to be a new revolution in the WordPress ecosystem.

Panelists: Danielle Zarcaro, Grzegorz Ziółkowsk, Koen Van den Wijngaert, and Milana Cap.

Why Contributing Could Be for You

Contributing to the WordPress community is an achievement for us. If you can successfully contribute to the WordPress core, you will get the official badge to show on your profile. That will ultimately increase your profile value. Though we have the intention to join the community, many of us don’t know the exact procedure.

This session was all about the ways and major benefits of contributing to the WordPress project. You will meet a few of the thousands of contributors across the globe who ‘make’ the software and are part of its thriving community. These contributors will share what inspires them to be involved and highlight why and how you could too.

Panellists: Pedro Fonseca, Abha Thakor.

The Future of WordPress Theme

WordPress theme customization process is getting changed. Now you can replace and customize a particular block from a theme with another block. This makes you more flexible to design your theme as per your needs.

This panel discussion was about sharing information and tips about this new WordPress revolution and all the opportunities that bring to the ecosystem.

Panellists: Ben Dwyer, Daisy Olsen, Imran Sayed, and Raitis Sevelis.

WordCamp Europe 2021 Workshops – Learn from the Expert

WordPress experts from different regions took several workshops related to advanced WordPress customization. If you’re a WordPress developer, these workshops will be definitely handy for you. Let’s take a look at these workshops.

• WP-CLI, How to Manage WordPress from the Command Line: This workshop was taken by Marcel Tannich. It was planned for the beginner & advanced WordPress users who are not familiar with the command line yet and are looking for an easy way to get started. Check this workshop from here.

• How to Start Designing for WordPress: Javier Arce took this session. He is a product designer at Automattic and a member of the Make WordPress Design Team. This session was aimed to teach the attendants how to begin contributing to the project, how is the WordPress Design Library organized, and how to structure their Figma files. Click here to watch the session.

• Are Your Customers Looking for You? How to Do Keyword Research: This session was taken by David Zimmerman. If you’re struggling to research keywords for your content, this workshop will definitely help you out to solve this problem. Click here to watch this workshop on keyword research.

Get Ready for Full Site Editing – Future of WordPress

Full site editing is planned to give you one unique way to edit everything on your site. Right now you can edit different parts of your WordPress site using different options. Full site editing is trying to solve this problem.

The goal is to give you more power, flexibility, and freedom to design your WordPress site. It will also streamline the editing process. Moreover, it will let you see how these changes will look like in the front end. So, get ready to embrace this new update – Full site editing.

See You Next WordCamp in Porto

So, these are all the important updates of WordCamp Europe 2021. We’re hoping this one will remain as the last online WordCamp and next year the WordCamp will be physical in Porto, Portugal. It’s gonna be a blast just like every time and will be getting a lot of updates from the WordPress community.

So, get ready to attend the next year’s WordCamp, and hopefully, we will meet you there. The WordCamp is supposed to take place between 2-4 June 2022. Till then, take care.